


Obsidian

by zigostia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:26:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24172795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zigostia/pseuds/zigostia
Summary: Fire was rarely known as a quirk. So unpopular, there hadn’t been a case of it for over a decade. The controversy was harsh, with scathing opinions upon its ability to wreak danger and havoc to society when gone uncontrolled. An arsonist’s dream come true.Ice was nearly unheard of.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 34
Kudos: 165





	Obsidian

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Обсидиан](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24808408) by [Little_Unicorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Little_Unicorn/pseuds/Little_Unicorn)



> This universe was inspired by the song Arsonist's Lullaby by Hozier, the anime My Hero Academia, the novel Savvy by Ingrid Law, the fic Left by lifeonmars, and the movie Frozen. 
> 
> The story diverges from canon after A Study in Pink. TW for mentions of past abusive relationships.

Stella Watson hated spicy foods. Every date she went on with her future husband was over ice water and mild curry, nothing higher, never more. But they rarely ate out, because she could cook like nobody’s business. It was her quirk, after all. Her husband had took on the less common, but often sought-after, quirk for flowers, and their garden flourished with azaleas and lavender in the spring.

Stella hated spicy foods, but when she was pregnant, she developed a sudden craving, so strong it nearly keeled her over in the dim hours of the morning. Her husband stocked up on chili peppers and sriracha sauce, and took note of her rising temperatures with alarm. The doctors found nothing wrong with her health, and although her skin was burning and sweat beaded on her temples every night as she went to sleep, she remained strong, and always with a voracious appetite for spice.

When John Hamish Watson was born, he had a fever of thirty-nine degrees, but his pulse was steady and his pressure was fine. His mother stroked his cheeks and felt the heat emanating out. John’s face was flushed and his eyes were big, strong, and steely blue. His wailing pierced through the hospital room.

When John was five years old, he had his first proper birthday cake. He stared at the tiny flame on the single candle atop the homemade vanilla-blueberry cake, gaze unwavering, attention not swayed even by the rattling of neatly-wrapped gifts to his side. When John’s mother turned her back on him for a single moment to grab the plates, John giggled, surged forwards from his seat, and grabbed at the open flame.

His father screamed. His mother turned, saw John’s pale, chubby hand in the midst of the candle, and shrieked, lunging for John and yanking him back.

John wailed in protest and tossed his head back and forth, shaking a fist in the air. His parents stared at his hand, now draped in red-orange-yellow, shifting with every movement, like someone took a bucket of flames and poured it down his arm. His skin, beneath, was unharmed.

His mother let go. John waved his hands and sent sparks flying.

Fire was rarely known as a quirk. So unpopular, there hadn’t been a case of it for over a decade. The controversy was harsh, with scathing opinions upon its ability to wreak danger and havoc to society when gone uncontrolled. An arsonist’s dream come true. The elementals were commonly riddled with such stereotypes.

John’s mother nearly earned the title herself, her protectiveness over her son was so fierce and so complete. She took her son’s hands in her own and stroked them gently, caressed them with the softest of touches, murmured that he was perfect and strong and beautiful, her beautiful boy. When he came to her with teary eyes and a runny nose, his collar singed and his hands clenched sharply behind his back, she coaxed them out from hiding. Kissed his palms, and taught him to control his breathing, to let his mind relax, let the anger dissipate into the air, swirling like smoke from a blown-out match. She sang to him on sleepless nights and soothed his frustration with an ocean-deep melody. Their dining table was freckled with blacked-out burns. His mother called them beauty marks.

School was a more difficult matter altogether. After the third phone call home and the dozenth complaint, after John shoved his head into the pillows and refused to touch anything but himself, his mother made a call to a specialist.

Her name was Abby, and she spun tapestries of silk scarves and woollen hats with a dash of her quirk, weaving in just a trickle of something altogether special. On his tenth birthday, John was presented with a pair of leather gloves, woven in with the finest fibres from an old ebony tree.

When he was seventeen, John had a girlfriend named Miranda who stroked her fingers down those gloves like they were something precious. One day, Miranda placed a hand over John’s, smiled at him through her lashes, and said, “Come back to my place?”

Miranda’s house was filled with knick-knacks and souvenirs, colourful trinkets and charms. Her words fell sweet as honey, and she could barter the most weathered of street sellers to mere pennies. Her bedsheets were robin’s egg blue. When John reached for her top, she stopped him.

“Take off your gloves,” she said, and John froze.

“I can’t,” John said.

Miranda tilted her head and rolled her eyes playfully. “You’ll be fine,” she soothed. “John. Take them off.”

She kissed him again, gently, and John hesitated for a minute before he raised his trembling hands and peeled them off his fingers, inch by inch exposing skin that was eggshell-pale, having not seen the sun in years.

John counted in his head. Three seconds in, three seconds out. He cupped Miranda’s cheeks and stroked his fingers down her skin. Miranda smiled and turned her face to the side to kiss his palm. John inhaled sharply. Miranda flinched and yelped.

John tore his hand away and watched with a sinking anvil in his heart shuddering down to the pit of his stomach as the place he had touched Miranda bloomed into a ruddy-pink burn.

“I can’t do this,” Miranda had said. She sounded genuinely contrite, and John thought with a wormwood-like bitterness that it was the most he could hope for, really, more than that.

The gloves were on the floor. John picked them up. 

He slipped them on, and he didn’t take them back off for six years.

The army was a breath of fresh air, dappled with the spice of gunpowder and sweat. No one talked about their quirks. No one cared about his gloves. John Watson was compacted into the crowds, a man amongst thousands, none different and all alike. He ran with his men, he fought with his men, and he killed with his men.

Helders was golden-haired and freckled, with jellybean green eyes and a smile that could melt the harshest of commanders. He wiped the tables in poker like nobody’s business. John spent heady summer nights sitting on sand dunes next to him, gazing at smoke-splattered stars in the sky. John told Helders about how Harry could pour water into a glass and by the time it was full it wasn’t water, but apple cider—or hot chocolate, or tea, or vodka. Helders told John about his wife, and how all she needed to do was run her hands down an instrument and it would sing for her, wood, brass, or string.

When John held him while he bled out in the hot desert sand, staining the grains a brilliant scarlet, Helders looked up at John and smiled. He raised a hand until his trembling fingertips touched John’s cheek.

 _Thank you, brother,_ John heard inside his head, and the hand fell away from his face.

John stroked Helders’s eyes closed, and then shut his own, feeling everything he’d tried so hard to bury down surging up, bubbling over, his mother’s singing voice drowned in the gunfire.

When reinforcements finally arrived to carry them away on a rough, scratchy stretcher, the divot in the sand where John had lain was sparkling in the sun where the sand had burned to glass.

John lived in a dingy, dusted flat five floors up. His lifestyle of cheap food and no pets meant his pension could suffice for a more spacious home, but he found that he didn’t really care.

When Mike Stamford showed up while he was sitting on a park bench on a grey Thursday afternoon, John didn’t need to fake his smile. It was a small smile, but more genuine than any others he’d given in years. 

“John Watson, ‘innit?” he asked heartily. John didn’t need to affirm it. Mike had never forgotten a single name in his forty or so odd years of his life. It didn’t matter if he saw them once or twice or twelve times. 

Their chatter was casual as they ambled along. “Who’d want a flatmate like me?” John had asked, dry and scalding, and Mike tilted his head and got a glint in his eye.

Sherlock Holmes shook John’s hand and only gave a single glance to his gloves before his gaze slid crisply up to his eyes, flicking to his cheek, his ears, his eyebrows—like a machine analysis, or a CT scan.

“Afghanistan or Iraq?” he asked.

John felt his lips tighten. “Afghanistan,” he said. Mind-readers were elite-level quirks, and most of them worked government jobs and were the type to wear sunglasses at night. Sherlock’s eyes were a harsh, pale blue, and he didn’t look away when John stared.

John didn’t know if he was desperate, lonely, or just plain bored to all hell, but he made his decision to move in that very second.

Turns out, Sherlock wasn’t a mind-reader. That was his brother.

Mycroft Holmes had taken one look at John and his eyes had gleamed. “How interesting,” he murmured. “Be very careful, Doctor Watson.”

The very next day, when he felt the handle of the gun heat up under his hands, seeping through the leather gloves in trickles that screamed danger in every direction, John heard his heartbeat thundering in his ears and thought fleetingly that this was the exact screaming opposite of careful, and for the first time in forever, the heat was a welcome warmth.

“You should take those off.”

John was making tea. His hand froze midway through pouring the kettle, and he watched as a droplet of water skittered onto the countertop.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“John,” Sherlock said, and actually meant, _Don’t be dim._ “Maybe it was more difficult in elementary school, but I have ample evidence to believe that your self-control has bettered since then. Take them off.”

John put down the kettle and stared at the wafts of steam curling up from the mug. “I don’t—need to,” he said, biting down the word _want_ that was originally on his tongue. Sherlock could always tell when he was lying. He didn’t need a quirk to do it, either.

“There are three vials of chemicals in the drawer next to you that will prove to be highly toxic once exposed to oxygen in even the slightest leak. There are over half a dozen concealed weapons in this room alone. We are currently blazing a trail towards a dangerous criminal who has proven many times their capacity to kill.” John had turned around to look at him at that point. There was a very faint smile tracing his mouth. “I don’t think an open flame is the most of our worries.”

“Wouldn’t even make the list,” John said.

“No,” Sherlock agreed.

John grabbed the second, unfilled mug—the one that wasn’t his, with one cube of sugar accompanying the teabag. He carried it to the kitchen sink and opened the tap until it was brimming with water.

His gloves came off. They lay gently on the counter; inconspicuous, innocuous. John cupped the mug in both hands, and let out a deep breath through pursed lips as he watched it begin to steam. 

When he handed it to Sherlock, he was smiling, and the flush that rose on his cheeks when the smile was returned had nothing to do with the heat in his hands.

Sherlock’s quirk had a tendency of bringing out the worst in people. Mixed with his poison of choice in career, a tongue resembling a dagger, and an adrenaline junkie’s cold hard habits, and it was a miracle he hadn’t gotten himself killed yet.

Maybe his quirk was flirting with death. Being in the right place at the right time, which, in objective, Normal People standards, meant the wrong place at the wrong time, often escaping death by a single, scythe-scraped hair.

When John inquired for the dozenth time, Sherlock finally looked up at him with an icy venom in his eyes.

“Tell me, John,” he said, “does it honestly matter that much to you? Are you as judgemental as to change your opinion on me because of a hastily slapped-on label? Shove me into your neat little societal boxes?”

And John had fallen silent.

“I’m sorry,” he said after what felt like an eon. Sherlock didn’t respond, but he allowed John to approach him and help him in his experiment without a scathing comment, and John had learned the language of the consulting detective long enough to take that as the forgiveness that it was.

He didn’t ask again.

-+-+-+-

Peter Hochins was the suspect behind a whole boatload of foul play, and over the course of the past few days they had run him down to the quick, but he was still nowhere to be found.

“Found something,” John said, peering at the text message on his phone. “Lestrade has a tip for us: a connection. Someone with a tie-in and a grudge against Hochins, apparently. Their office is about fifteen minutes away. Might be able to persuade him to talk.”

Sherlock made a noise of assent. John scrolled down further, scanned the address and name. “Looks like the place is called… Wilkes Industries,” he read out.

From the carpet where he had been steadily pacing, Sherlock abruptly stumbled.

“What is it?” John asked.

“Nothing,” Sherlock said.

John hadn’t believed him.

The ride to the office was thick with silence. When the secretary smiled at them and said, “Mr. Wilkes will see you now,” John watched Sherlock’s hand tighten around where it was gripping the tail of his coat, and pushed himself forwards to enter the room first.

Wilkes had jet-black hair, slicked back with what must have been half a jar of gel, and a sleazy grin to match.

“Sherlock Holmes,” he said, casting his gaze up and down with a low whistle. 

John felt alarm prickle down his spine. 

“Sebastian,” Sherlock said.

“Gotta say, Sherlock, I really wasn’t expecting this. What a pleasure to see you again.”

John bristled and clasped his hands together behind his back. He felt dirty just standing there. Sherlock’s face had arranged itself into an expressionless mask.

“Where is Peter Hochins?” Sherlock said, crisply, curtly.

Sebastian smiled. “Just like that? Not even a hello?”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “Hello,” he said sardonically.

“You know,” Sebastian said. “Why don’t both of you sit down? Have a cup of tea? Play a little catch-up?”

“We’re kind of in a hurry,” John said.

Sebastian eyes shot to him for the first time since they’d entered the room. They narrowed. “And who are you, exactly?”

“I’m Sherlock’s partner,” John said.

“Partner.” The word was caressed in Sebastian’s mouth. “Sherlock, don’t tell me you’ve finally moved on.”

“Enough.” Sherlock’s voice carried a promise that resembled a warning. “Your girlfriend of over a year just left you, and you’ve gained ten pounds in the past month. You are slowly but surely descending into methamphetamine addiction. There was nothing to move on from. We need to know the location of Peter Hochins.”

Sebastian’s eyes had turned flinty. “Sherlock Holmes,” he cooed. “Ever the _ice queen.”_

In the corner of John’s vision, he saw Sherlock twitch.

“Sherlock?” John asked, murmuring from the corner of his mouth. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Sherlock said.

“Oh,” Sebastian said. “Don’t tell me he doesn’t know.”

“Doesn’t know what?” John said.

“John,” Sherlock said, sounding odd.

“Sherlock here has a little secret, you see.” Sebastian stood up from his desk. “John, I can see that you’re wearing gloves. I think Sherlock might need them more than you.”

John paused, not understanding. He turned to Sherlock for clarification.

Sherlock’s head was lowered. John followed his gaze to his hands.

Frost was crawling up his slim, pale wrists. His fingertips were covered in ice.

John felt something simmering in his chest, fury and freezing shock and a fiery, pulsing hope, a maelstrom of emotions too tangled to decipher. “Sherlock,” he said, reaching for his hand. Sherlock snatched it away, clutching his hands to his chest.

“You call yourself his partner, do you?” Sebastian spoke softly, sweetly, saccharine. “Good luck with that. Sherlock couldn’t even _touch_ anyone without hurting them. Isn’t that right, sweetheart?”

Sherlock’s eyes were closed. He inhaled deeply through his nose, expelled through his lips. “I need to know where Hochins is,” he said through gritted teeth.

“You haven’t gotten any better at controlling yourself,” Sebastian murmured. “Still shutting yourself out from everyone else. Alone is what protects you, Sherlock. People get close to you, they get hurt. Or worse. Are you really going to do the same to John Watson?”

“You’re wrong.”

John couldn’t watch any longer.

He let his gloves fall onto the floor, and showed his hands to Sebastian, his fingers flickering with flames. “My quirk balances his. He can’t hurt me.”

There was a harsh burst of satisfaction at the surprise that flitted past Sebastian’s face, but it was soon covered with another laugh: short and harsh.

“You think I was talking about that?” Sebastian came around his desk to come closer, and John felt his hands grow hotter, fire licking up to his elbows. “That doesn’t matter. It’s nothing physical, I assure you. No, Sherlock’s problem is within himself. The ice is just a side effect. The real issue is his own mind. You think you can put up with him? His _coldness?_ His royal majesty, the ice princess? What did the papers say? A sociopathic machine? Do you honestly think you can stick around without getting, pardon the pun—frostbitten? Personal experience says a resounding no.”

Next to him, Sherlock made a noise so quiet John nearly missed it through the pulsing rage in his ears.

“What did you do?” John seethed. “What did you do to him? What did you tell him?”

Sebastian raised an eyebrow and smiled. “Nothing that wasn’t true.”

John lunged for him, only to be stopped by a hand, icy and firm on the small of his back.

“Don’t,” Sherlock said.

“Sherlock,” John said, desperately.

“I know,” Sherlock said, sounding, of all things, tired. “It’s not worth it, John.”

John paused, and then let out a rough snarl before dropping his arms. Sherlock’s hand fell from his back, and John tried reaching for him again, only to be met with a subtle dodge and lowered eyes that wouldn’t meet his gaze. John gritted his teeth so hard his jaw ached. He forced himself to look back at the third man in the room.

“Fuck you,” John said.

“Language.”

“Go to hell, you fucking bastard.”

“I’ll see you there,” Sebastian said, glancing at John’s hands.

“You’re a monster.”

Sebastian steepled his fingers. “Is that what you really think, John? You’re blindsided. I was like you too, once, you know? Sherlock and I go way back. I’m only trying to be helpful. Advice for a rookie.” He sighed. “Peter Hochins is in a cabin in Charlesmith, fifteen minutes East from the lake. He should be there in… Oh, about twenty minutes. You could probably make it there in time if you hurry. I didn’t particularly care for him, anyway.”

“Cabin in Charlesmith,” John said. “Twenty minutes. Fantastic.”

He opened his mouth again, something much less PG-13 rising in his throat, but stopped as he felt the icy touch on his back once more. 

“Let’s go, John,” Sherlock said.

“Okay,” John said, after a moment. It was something in Sherlock’s expression.

“Pleasure talking to you both,” Sebastian said. “John, I’d suggest you remember what I told you. Despite what you may think, I am truly trying to help. This isn’t about his quirk, it’s about who he is.”

“And what would you know about quirks,” Sherlock muttered, and the door shut before any of them could say more.

Sherlock was holding something out to John. A pair of gloves.

“I forgot those,” John said.

“Yes.”

“Sherlock—”

“Twenty minutes,” Sherlock said, and there was something subtly desperate in his tone.

John swallowed the words back down. “Right,” he said. He put on his gloves. The leather was butter-soft and supple, and for once, John wanted to rip them right off.

John changed his mind. Sherlock’s quirk was Not Good. So very Not Good, in fact, that he had half a mind to lock Sherlock inside his own house and border him up to the confines of four rock-solid walls, where he would go insane with ennui but come out of it breathing, alive, and _safe._

“Jesus fucking—” John’s mind felt scrambled, thoughts pinging like pachinko balls in a twirling bingo cage. He ran his hands down Sherlock, immobile and unresponsive, and it was more out of instinct than anything that had him pushing the figure so that he was lying on his side in the semi-prone position. John grappled for one slender, pale hand (cold and clammy with the thin layer of water that slicked his skin from where John had dragged him out from the partially-frozen lake Peter Hochins had shoved him into before dashing away at a speed too fast to be human, that fucking bastard, John was going to knock him dead.) He pinched Sherlock’s nail, watched the colour seep through, rosy pink to a dangerous cream-white, much too slowly, in a way that sent his heart careening through his ribs.

They were fifteen minutes away from the nearest shelter, the run-down cabin with a fireplace filled with rotting logs where they’d found the first few bodies. John had already called for reinforcements. Scotland Yard would arrive faster, but not fast enough.

“Sherlock,” John said desperately, and then gasped when he felt the sparks running down his arms.

He didn’t think. His hands were shaking as he shoved off his gloves, tossed them to the side as if they were disposable blue latex and not crafted by the most sought-after tailor in the whole goddamn country. His skin caught fire immediately, flames licking down the columns of his fingers, thirsty for air. John clenched them into fists and shut his eyes, a plea on his tongue to a deity he didn’t believe in, and breathed. Easy. Slow. Three seconds in and three seconds out.

He opened his eyes. His hands were flushed, but the flames were snuffed.

He cast away a glimmer of his attention to maintain his breathing, and directed the rest to the lax figure in front of him, chest barely moving and covered in the quickly-freezing remnants of the lake. They were turning to ice so fast that Sherlock seemed to gleam in the low evening sunlight. The glare made him look ethereal. Untouched. John felt a stutter in his chest and forced it down.

Sherlock’s cheek felt no warmer than the snow he was lying in when John settled a hand onto the skin. Moisture gleamed from his palms and trickled down Sherlock’s face, and he felt heat pushing through like a beam of light through cloudy skies. He guided his hands down Sherlock’s chest, and felt his heartbeat flutter under his fingers, thready and hitched.

His hands were steady.

Sherlock’s lashes trembled. His lips parted on the slightest exhalation.

“You stay with me,” John said fiercely. “You hear me? Don’t you fucking leave me, Sherlock, not now.” His hands flew to Sherlock’s shoulders and squeezed, hard, burning. 

Sherlock seemed to fight him. Once John had reached his shins, he would trace his way back up to find that the sleet had reformed onto his neck, growing a fractal of shimmering frost. John didn’t stop. The occasional flame skittered up his fingers and scorched Sherlock’s coat. John lost count of his breaths inside his head.

When the paramedics finally arrived, John had melted a ten-feet radius of snow, revealing yellowed grass and thawing tundra, and Sherlock Holmes was warm and breathing in his arms.

Sherlock didn’t talk about it.

The case wrapped up in an all-too-familiar, similar fashion. A clean break, save for the one line of fine print that John hadn’t known was there until it was forcibly put on a pedestal, the one that had supposedly been etched into Sherlock for years and years. A slow-acting poison.

When Sherlock was out in the morgue tying up the last of the loose ends, John walked up to a blinking light from a Sony camera on the corner of the street, and said, “I need to speak to Mycroft. Now.”

A car pulled up fifteen minutes later, black and sleek.

Mycroft seemed to have a knack for finding abandoned warehouses that carried the ever-present flair of the dramatic and the noir. “John Watson,” he greeted.

John didn’t bother with reciprocating it. “Did you know?” he demanded.

Mycroft tilted his head and his eyes went glittering. John tamped down the anger and forced his mind to clear, to shove forwards a film reel replay in panoramic detail. He had always had a good memory.

“Ah,” Mycroft said.

John sucked in a breath. “You knew.”

Mycroft’s smile was wan.

“You knew about my quirk, the first time we met. You knew about Sebastian. You knew _everything._ Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I needed to ensure that you were to be trusted.”

John shook his head and let out a short laugh. “Well, here I am. What’s the verdict?”

“Beyond my expectations,” Mycroft responded, and it surprised John enough that he fell silent.

Mycroft began to walk a short path in front of him, back and forth. He swung his umbrella in a wide arc around the handle. “Too much heart was always Sherlock’s problem,” he said.

“What the hell does that mean?”

Mycroft stopped pacing. His gaze fixed onto where John’s hands were clenched in his lap. “That’s Abby’s work, isn’t it?” he responded.

John stiffened. “What?”

“I’d thought so,” Mycroft murmured, and leaned against his umbrella. The umbrella. John hadn’t paid much attention to it in their first meeting, but now he saw. It was black, but instead of John’s matte, deep shade of leather, it gleamed.

“Like two sides of the same coin,” Mycroft said.

“Get to the point,” John snapped.

Mycroft’s lips thinned into a humourless smile. “Sherlock refused to wear his own pair. He’d freeze them until they cracked. We went through half a dozen replacements and a great gap of our fortune trying to sedate him.”

“What does this have to do with anything?”

“His specialty was an ice storm. He’d make these great, big shards fall from the sky. He sent Mummy to the hospital, once. That’s when he moved out. When Sherlock went to university, we all worried, but he came back with his hands bare, no ice in sight.” Mycroft smoothed a hand down the length of the umbrella, his expression nearly wistful. “Sherlock can control himself. He has made his choices, and this is what has come of them. It’s not ideal, but it is what it is.”

“Bullshit,” John said. “You didn’t even try.”

Mycroft’s eyes sharpened to a venomous knife’s edge. “Believe me, Doctor Watson, it is with utter sincerity and regret when I say I have tried _everything._ I can only accept the circumstances. You…” His grey eyes shifted into a peculiar scrutiny. “Your quirk is very special. Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, was it? Afghanistan? We would’ve found you otherwise. But it seems as if you’ve come to Sherlock anyway. You’re different from the others—if you’re willing, I can foresee a few fortunate futures. However, heed a warning I’ve learned over the years, from a brother to a friend: you can’t fix frostbite with a third-degree burn.”

But John was willing to try.

Sherlock sat at the dinner table, staring at an empty plate while John stared at him. They’d played a decent game of cat-and-mouse, but John had him cornered and he was not going to let this go. Not anymore. 

“Sebastian Wilkes,” John said.

Sherlock remained still. “He was my first relationship. I was in university and I was… inexperienced.”

John waited until it became obvious he wasn't going to say any more. “You know it's not—”

Sherlock cut him off with a scoff. “Not my fault,” he said. “Yes, John, I know what the term _abusive relationship_ entails. No need to go all therapist on me.”

John heaved a sigh through gritted teeth. “That’s not my point,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether or not you know it, it’s if you believe it.”

At that, Sherlock fell quiet.

John continued. “Whatever I can say to you, I know you’ve thought of already. I want to show you instead.”

Glancing up, Sherlock’s eyes were skeptical. Not confused, but they held an ounce of trepidation and more than a little caution. John looked closer and saw the minuscule flicker of hope.

John stood up from his chair and walked around the table. “I want to say one thing. Just for me.” He waited until Sherlock’s eyes were on him, and made sure he was letting all of it shine through his gaze: every churning emotion he was feeling, the good, the bad, and the ugly. “Maybe you need some more time to reconcile with the truth, but I don’t believe for a second a single word that bastard said. Sherlock, you are the most extraordinary man I have ever met. You are brilliant. And I would never want you to be anything other than who you are now.”

Sherlock’s eyes had gone wide, shining in the glow of the light overhead. Slowly, deliberately, John pulled off his gloves and let them fall onto the table.

“Trust me?” John whispered.

Sherlock watched as John flexed his fingers, fire skittering up and twirling off in bursts of smoke. He nodded.

John really hoped this was going to work. He dampened the flames until it was a short, tempered glow, and placed a hand on Sherlock’s cheek. A rogue spark leaped from his fingertips.

Sherlock felt cold under his palm. He flinched at first contact, then shuddered, then went still, his chest rising and falling an inch with every breath.

John reached over and grabbed Sherlock’s hand. Ice was beginning to form between the cracks of his knuckles. John intertwined their fingers, and it trickled down their wrists, dew-like.

The walk up the stairs, down the hall, and into the bedroom was silent. John didn’t let go of Sherlock’s hand once.

The bedsheets were Egyptian cotton, and it singed under John’s fingertips. He took his time taking Sherlock apart, piece by piece, luxuriously. He ran his hands down the planes of Sherlock’s chest. He traced every feature on his face, coaxing his fingers across his eyebrow and stroking a thumb past plush, parted lips. He let his hands grow red-hot in the way he hadn’t allowed them to in a lifetime of hiding. He sighed at the heady relief of Sherlock’s skin, chilly like the first freshly-fallen snow. Soft noises escaped from Sherlock’s mouth. John swallowed them like he was starved. The air grew hazy, twirling with tendrils of steam, and the room filled with the smell of smoke.

It wasn’t perfect. In fact, it hardly ever was. 

After so many long years of shoving it down, Sherlock’s quirk sprung out like a bursted dam: strident, erratic, and near impossible to temper. Quickly, the flat became dappled with scorch marks, and icicles frequently hung from kitchen counters. (Beauty marks, John said.) On particularly frustrating evenings, they collided in a fit of sparks and sent both of them spiralling. When John kissed Sherlock for the first time under the roof of their flat on a windy winter’s evening, Sherlock gripped his shoulders and his lips turned blue. John’s shoulder ached for days afterwards, stiff and relentless with a bone-deep chill.

When John made the bi-yearly call for a replacement pair of gloves, he placed an order for two.

Lestrade didn’t even give them a second glance, when they entered Scotland Yard the next day and Sherlock skimmed through reports with elegant, covered hands. “I’ve seen Sherlock wear a bathrobe to a murder scene,” was his response. “Doesn’t matter much to me as long as he can still think.”

Besides—John was already coming up with ideas for the future. He’d like to see how fast criminals could run on pavements frozen over with ice. Or surrounded by a burning field of tall, dry grass. It would take time before they would learn the control it needed, but for once in his life, he was content, gazing at all the possibilities rather than charging in headstrong.

On bad days, frost would line the inky seams of the gloves (made of the finest silk and laced with Arctic sealskin) and Sherlock’s eyes would turn flinty and dull, tossing cutting remarks off an icy tongue. His apologies were stilted, slow, stumbling glaciers. A man of actions rather than words. 

“You can’t fix frostbite with a third-degree burn,” John told him one evening in their reconciliation.

Sherlock paused. “You talked to Mycroft,” he accused.

John laughed. “I did. Quite a while ago, actually. He told me what had happened.” He let lazy, glowing embers dance along his palms in the colour of sunset skies. He grazed them down Sherlock’s spine, absentmindedly. He spoke with hesitation. “Sherlock, did you do it on purpose? I mean… Sebastian. Did you let it happen?”

Sherlock’s tone was clipped. “I needed to learn control.”

“That’s not controlling it, that’s concealing it.” John stroked his fingers down Sherlock’s arm and watched goosebumps rise up. “It won’t do you any good.”

“It was the only option I could see.”

“And now?”

Sherlock turned over so that he was facing John. The corners of his lips quirked up. “Now, I see another.”

They didn’t cancel each other out as much as they created something new altogether. Fire and frost, encased in a waltz. Fragile and explosive and worth every burn.

John put an arm around the other, pulling him in close. He tucked his face into Sherlock’s hair and inhaled the sweet, fresh scent, the familiar brisk sharpness one carried after being outside too long on a perpetual winter’s walk. No other word for it than _cold._ Sherlock’s head was heavy on John's shoulder, and his breathing was tranquil and even.

“You’ll stay,” Sherlock murmured, so gently it was little more than a breath.

John ran a hand down Sherlock’s side, then back up again. “Always.”

On the nightstand lay two pairs of gloves, tangled together. One day, John would take them off and never put them back on again.

There was a swift wind outside, whistling through the cracks of the insulation. A tentative pittering. Outside, it started to rain.

> _“Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness.”_
> 
> ― George R.R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire.

**Author's Note:**

> If you've made it this far, I am so very grateful for you. Thank you endlessly for taking the time to read this.
> 
> Kudos and comments are forever cherished and loved <3


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